To Outsource or Not To Outsource Social Media Marketing Is the Question
Outsource Social Media for focus on business
Outsourcing your social media marketing sounds interesting as it is a very time consuming marketing effort. Moreover the employees in companies are not experienced with social media marketing and by outsourcing they can focus on the core business of the company.
Outsource with care
Most aspects of social media, i.e. campaigns and targeted programs, contests, and news releases can be outsourced as significant savings can be made. Still they need to be aligned and in sync with the overall marketing goals and business communications objectives. This requires a strict marketing strategy, content plan and clear guidelines in order to keep the outsourced efforts in line. The content plan should define the type of blog posts, Tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn messages, white papers, video’s that should be used. The marketing mix should contain both traditional media and social media.
Additionally the company must maintain a responsible internal control and management. What remains questionable is if the outsourcing company can carry on the dialogue which can emerge from the social media marketing messages ? As a dialogue is bi-directional then when is the input or action required from the employees of the company ?
In collaboration with the outsourcing company the metrics should be defined to gauge the success of the outsourced social media. If possible even the ROI of the social media should be calculated.
Customer care and crisis handling
However other efforts such as customer care, crisis handling are best executed by the employees of the company as these can and will have direct impact on the current sales and can have long lasting effects. Moreover the enviable reputation and branding that business have build over many years can be tarnished or lost within hours by misuse, faulty communication or mismanagement of social media marketing.
Not outsourcing all Social Media
Entirely outsourcing your social media is not possible as customer related issues and crisis handling are too important.
The part you can outsource requires to have a marketing strategy, content plan and guidelines in place in order not to derail.
Do you outsource your social media ?
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